What is the Uniform Crime Report (UCR)?

The UCR is a voluntary collaborative program of more than 18,000 law enforcement agencies that report data on crimes. The objective is to use this data to generate statistics about crime from a variety of places in the US; different cities, counties, and states, and these statistics help recognize changes or trends throughout the years.

What are Index crimes and non-Index crimes?

Index crimes are types of crime that are used to measure the overall crime rate in a particular area, and are crimes that line up with both state and federal law. These crimes include criminal homicide, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson (listed in hierarchy of ‘seriousness’). To record an index offense, “citizens must decide if a crime has been committed, and if they want to report. Then, an officer must decide if a crime has occurred, how to classify it, and whether to record it”. The “Hierarchy Rule” states that the highest offense occurring in an incident should be the only offense reported. 

Non-index crimes are almost all crimes not included in the list of index crimes. These crimes are only recorded if there is an arrest. Generally viewed as ‘less serious’. Includes other assaults, embezzlement, vandalism, sex offenses, drunkenness, and status offenses. 

What crimes are excluded from Index offenses?

Deaths caused by negligence, attempts to kill, assaults to kill, suicides, and accidental deaths are excluded. White-collar crime, Corporate violence, political crime, computer fraud, police shootings, etc. are also excluded. Crime that isn’t reported is excluded from index offenses. 

What is the ‘dark figure’ of crime?

The massive number of crimes not reported to or recorded by criminal justice agencies. 

What do SRD and NCVS stand for, and how do these approaches address the ‘dark figure’?

SRD stands for “self report studies” and they are a way to measure crime by asking groups of criminals (usually juvenile delinquents) about the crimes they have committed. These surveys are anonymous. 

The NCVS is the National Crime Victimization Survey, which is a nationwide survey that obtains information from about 240,000 Americans per year about the frequency, characteristics, and consequences of criminal victimization they have experienced. This records all non-fatal instances of victimization, and takes into account the gender, race, and age of the victims. Both of these approaches aim to see the level of crime that goes unreported, therefore addressing the ‘dark figure’ of crime. 

What are some examples of major trends that are observed in UCR, SRD, NCVS data?

According to UCR, crime increased from 1960 through 1990 and has been declining since 1991. 

Both the NCVS and SRD suggest relative stability and even a decline in crime since 1973. 

The distribution of violent and property offenses in the United States is reasonably similar to that found in other industrialized nations. However, violence and homicide rate in the US is considerably higher than in other industrialized countries.

Data suggests that:

• Crime is concentrated in urban areas

• Overall crime rates are higher in the West; murder, rape, assault are highest in the South

• The North East is the safest

• Most crimes are committed between 6pm and 6am

• December is the month when more crime is committed

• Criminals are more likely to be males under the age of 25

• UCR data suggests social class and race factors in criminal behavior. Self-report data presents contradictory evidence

• Individuals most likely to be victimized are young, African American and Hispanic males in urban areas

• The elderly are the least likely to be the victims of crime